general questions and new to the scene

hey so i just started on my path of photography today got a nikon d60 and i was playing around in my house taking shots of fam and dog. what i see is that manual is pretty tough at first. wondering if anyone out there can give me tips on how to mess around with shutter speed and aperture. really appreciate the info. :thumbup:

If you do a bit of searching on the forum and generally on the internet, you will very fast come to understand the relation between aperture, shutter speed and ISO, and how they effect each other, and what is used when etc. Many people (me included) recommend the book "Understanding Exposure" by Bryan Peterson for beginners to photography. It will give you a general understanding of the above mentioned basics, and also you the necessary knowledge to go and discover photography by yourself.

As someone who is just getting into it myself, here is something easy that has helped me out.

1) Put the camera in AP mode and focus on something fairly close
2) Set the aperture at the lowest number (largest opening for light to come in, gives the fastest shutter speed) and take a picture
3) Keeping the camera on the subject, move the aperture up the scale taking pictures at each setting.

Do it both indoors and outdoors so you can see the effect the aperture/shutter ratio has. Also do it in SP mode.